Afghan treasures found

More than 22,000 priceless artifacts of the Kabul Museum--missing since the Soviet occupation--have been found. A world tour of the ancient treasures is being discussed.

November 18, 2004|By Michael Kilian, Washington Bureau.

WASHINGTON — Archeologists have identified more than 22,000 rare Afghan art and historical treasures as artifacts that vanished from the Afghanistan national museum during the 1979-89 Soviet invasion and occupation of that country, elating officials and scholars who hope to restore them to a rebuilt museum in downtown Kabul.

The priceless artworks, dating to 500 B.C., were spirited away from the museum by unknown individuals early in the period of Soviet rule and hidden for safekeeping in various locations in Kabul, said Fredrik Hiebert, the National Geographic archeologist who led a team that has inventoried and identified the treasures.

It was long feared that the treasures--from gold coins to religious statues to relics of kings--were lost. But Hiebert said Wednesday that Afghan authorities began recovering the largely unmarked safes and metal boxes containing the treasures last year, after U.S. forces overthrew the Taliban and a new government took power, though at first they had no idea what they held.

The museum, formally known as the Kabul Museum, was badly damaged during the Soviet occupation and suffered during the Taliban Islamic dictatorship and the war with the U.S. that followed.

Reintroducing tradition

While the museum is being reconstructed--and possibly relocated from the outskirts of Kabul to a better site downtown--Afghan officials want the artifacts to tour the world, reintroducing viewers to the image of Afghanistan as a country with a proud tradition and not just a suffering nation victimized by Soviet communists and Islamic extremists.

The Kabul Museum's roof was destroyed, its windows blown out and its interior burned in fires that consumed its records.

An estimated 70 percent of the museum's collection probably was looted or destroyed, Hiebert said. But the gold, bronze, ivory and terra cotta objects recovered and identified so far amount to "the majority of the masterpieces previously displayed in the Kabul Museum," he said.

"We were worried about animal damage, water damage, temperature damage," he said. "But they came out of their wrappings looking like they had just come from the museum. They're in really wonderful condition, and I can't explain it. It was an amazement to us and a joy."

Some artifacts were wrapped in pink toilet tissue, he said.

Renowned for their craftsmanship and beauty, the objects relate more than 2 millennia of Afghan history.

There are nearly 2,000 gold and silver coins bearing portraits of Afghan royalty that represent nearly the entire history of the Afghan monarchy.

`Bactrian Gold' also found

Also recovered were all 20,000 pieces of the museum's famed "Bactrian Gold" collection, representing Afghan culture during the centuries the region prospered as a major crossroads and central point along the fabled Silk Road caravan route connecting the Orient with the western reaches of Asia.

Three ivory statues nearly 3 feet high were identified as sculptures of historic water goddesses. Also among the objects are relics of Kushan Kingdom monarchs who ruled in the area in the 1st Century and plaster medallions depicting court life at their summer palaces. Of particular interest were hundreds of terra cotta Buddhist religious sculptures and carvings.

"Every box we opened was like a Christmas package," Hiebert said.

No one knows precisely who removed the treasures to safekeeping or how they did it. "There are many stories, and it's impossible to select one from all the others as the truth," Hiebert said.

The removals apparently occurred early in the Soviet period when the area around the museum became a hotbed of Afghan resistance to the Soviet puppet state and it seemed likely the museum would be caught in the crossfire--as in fact it was.

Hiebert said the museum director and Afghan culture minister at the time apparently knew the whereabouts of the treasures, but they disappeared in the civil war between the Soviet-backed regime and Islamic rebels who were supported by the United States.

He said another person who likely had knowledge of the artifacts' location, but never revealed it, was Najibullah Ahmadzai, a communist who headed the Afghan secret police early in the Soviet period and became president of the country in 1986.

Najibullah was captured by the Taliban and hanged from a traffic light post when the Islamic extremists seized control of Kabul in 1996.

The Taliban was interested in finding the missing treasures, possibly to destroy the Buddhist statues, as it did with other non-Islamic objects left behind in the museum, along with the monumental Buddha statues set in a cliff face at Bamiyan, Afghanistan. But it was unable to find anyone who would reveal the treasures' whereabouts.

In 2003, some pieces from the museum began turning up on the Tokyo, London and New York art markets, prompting fears that all the treasures had been looted. But the same year, the provisional government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai began to find the steel safes and metal boxes, many badly damaged. Some were in the presidential palace complex. Others were in bank vaults and more obscure locations.